As the hottest planet in the solar system, Venus is an uninviting, hostile world with crushing atmospheric pressure and surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Due to its harsh environment, it was widely presumed that Venus would have destroyed any spacecraft sent to its surface, leaving nothing behind. However, a new study suggests there may be a few remaining artifacts that haven’t yet wasted away to oblivion. A team of space archaeologists set out to understand the extent to which material left on the surface of Venus can be preserved. By analyzing 15 missions that visited the planet between 1965 and 1985, the team suspects that at least seven may have endured the Venusian environment and ended up as relics of space heritage on the surface. The findings, published in Geoarchaeology, suggest that despite Venus’ extreme heat and corrosive atmosphere, the planet’s slow geological processes and global climatic stability show high potential for long-term preservation of space artifacts.…